The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom is a graphic novel which opens when Kathy, the main character, has a child, a girl, at age seventeen. She still wants to keep to her dreams of going to college, but faces discouragement at every turn. Her mother raised three kids alone and her sister has four. No one wants to help, in fact they are demeaning towards her.
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But Kathy keeps her dreams intact because she loves her daughter, Stacie, and she sets off to get a job to support her and her child and save money for college. She works in a factory and eventually gets fired. She sets off cross country with a boyfriend she met at the factory and everything looks good until he becomes a batterer and she has to flee.
She finds herself in the desert and has a spiritual experience which helps her to have the strength to keep going and she has some luch and makes it to a friend's house in a city. There she gets back on her feet and meets Jackie, who tells her about financial aid and Metro College. Soon Kathy has realized her dream and is on the equestrian team, taking art and ballet classes and being asked her opinion about literature. She feels that her life is meaningful and wonders what her purpose might be on earth and how she might make a contribution.
The review of this Book prepared by Megan Edwards
This is an uplifting story written and illustrated in a graphic novel style. The illustrations are simplistic black and white but pack quite a punch in getting the point across. The story starts with Kathy having a baby at age 17. In spite of being a teenage, single mom with no support from her mother, Kathy was swept up with being a mom and being in love with her baby, Stacie.
She went to work in a latex factory but held on to her dream of going to college. She did well in her job until there was a strike and she was laid off. She tried working as a waitress with little success and then moved into a chemical plant. While at the plant she came across documents proving that the chemicals that they were working with were dangerous. She was discovered copying these documents for the union and was fired.
She and her new boyfriend, Dave, decided to pack up the baby and head west. Kathy soon discovered that Dave was not as nice as he had first seemed. When she expressed a desire to go to college he became enraged and beat her up so she and Stacie fled the town where they had settled with Dave, hitchhiking and camping in the desert. Kathy finally makes it to California where she meets her father for the first time. She then moves on to Denver where she enrolls in college and is able to make her childhood dream come true.
Even though Kathy has had a terrible life (we discover through flashbacks that she was molested as a child, thrown out of her home, and got pregnant through a rape) she still holds on to her dream and, miraculously, manages to remain positive and hopeful throughout this wonderful story.
The review of this Book prepared by D Gallagher
